Ever felt butterflies in your stomach before a big event or experienced a stomach ache when you’re under a deadline, or about to do something scary?
This isn’t just in your head; it’s a real thing called the gut-brain connection. It means that every emotion you feel is also tied directly to your gut.
Because of this, let us show you how keeping a journal can help manage your feelings and improve your gut health!
What is the Enteric Nervous System?
Think about your first kiss, or when you had a heartbreak. Or a time when you have received bad news.
You felt it in your stomach, right? It was like it was tied in knots or felt like your stomach dropped. We even have a term for it: gut punch.
Your gut has its own nervous system, known as the enteric nervous system (ENS). This network of nerves runs along your digestive tract (from your esophagus all the way to your colon) and helps control digestion. It’s also attached to your central nervous system, and they work together to create harmony in your body.
But that’s not all—the ENS also responds to your emotions, which is why your stomach reacts when you’re happy, anxious, or stressed. This is also why the enteric nervous system is also called the “second brain.“
The Gut-Brain Connection
The connection between your gut and brain is powerful. When you feel stressed or upset, your brain sends signals to your gut to pause on digestion so the body can handle the present stressor.
If you experience a lot of these stressors, your digestive tract is hampered, even if you’re back eating again after the stressor. This is how stress can cause gut issues like inflammation, bloating, or discomfort.
This relationship also works the other way, too; problems in your gut can send signals to the brain, leading to mood changes or increased stress.
IBS and the Mind-Body Link
Recent studies have shown that conditions like Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) are not actual gut disorders, but are closely linked to the nervous system.
Experts now see IBS as a mind-body issue, where both your mental state and physical health in your gut are connected. This means managing stress and emotions can directly impact your gut health!
How Journaling Helps
Journaling is a fantastic way to manage stress and tune into your body’s signals. Here’s how it can help with gut health:
- Reduces Stress: Writing down your thoughts and feelings can help clear your mind and reduce stress, which can calm your gut reactions.
- Increases Awareness: Keeping a daily journal allows you to track what triggers your gut issues. You might find patterns that connect your emotions to how your stomach feels.
- Encourages Mindful Eating: By noting down what you eat and how it makes you feel, journaling can promote mindful eating. This awareness can improve your digestion and reduce symptoms like bloating.
Journaling is more than just a way to record your day or showcase gratitude—it’s a tool that can help manage the health of both your mind and gut.
By understanding and respecting the deep connection between your emotions and your digestive system, you can use journaling to foster both mental and gut health, leading to a happier, less bloated life.
Let’s go a little deeper.
How Journaling Reduces Stress
Journaling goes beyond being a creative outlet—it’s a powerful tool for health. By engaging both hemispheres of your brain, journaling helps you make connections that might not be immediately obvious, serving as a stress reducer and a form of therapeutic activity.
Additionally, but utilizing both hemispheres of your brain, you begin to bring your brain back online from the limbic system hijack that happens when you’re feeling threatened or upset.
Writing in a journal can act as a form of stress relief. It allows you to express your thoughts and emotions on paper, which helps to clear the mind and lower stress levels.
This process is beneficial because when you write down what bothers you, the brain processes these thoughts through a different pathway, often leading to a new perspective and a decrease in anxiety.
This reduction in stress directly impacts the gut, often easing symptoms like bloating and discomfort.
Increasing Awareness Through Journaling
Journaling increases self-awareness by helping you to track your daily activities, thoughts, and feelings. It forces you to pay attention to details that you might overlook otherwise. For instance, you might start to notice patterns between what you ate and how you felt afterwards, or how certain stressful events affect your digestion.
This awareness can prompt changes that have a positive impact on both your mental and physical health.
Encouraging Mindful Eating
Journaling about your meals encourages mindful eating. By recording what you eat, when you eat, and how you feel afterwards, you become more attuned to the needs of your body and the effects of different foods on your gut.
This practice can lead you to make better food choices, improve digestion, and reduce gastrointestinal distress.
Journaling as a Connection Tool
The act of writing engages both the logical (left hemisphere) and the creative (right hemisphere) sides of the brain. This full-brain engagement helps in making connections that aren’t immediately evident.
For example, you might not realize that anxiety impacts your eating habits until you see a pattern of stress eating emerge in your journal.
Proven Benefits of Journaling
Journaling isn’t just a feel-good habit—it’s a science-backed way to reduce stress, process emotions, and support your body’s healing.
Studies show that journaling can:
- Lower cortisol, the body’s main stress hormone
- Improve emotional regulation, helping you feel calmer
- Reduce symptoms of anxiety and trauma, which often show up in the gut
- Support people with IBS by making it easier to track triggers and lower stress-related flare-ups
- Activate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is your body’s rest-and-digest mode
For people with stress-related digestive issues, this is big. When your body feels safe, your digestion works better—and journaling is one of the simplest ways to help that happen.
And the best part? It doesn’t take much and it doesn’t have to be complicated. Just a few minutes a day can lead to big changes in how your gut and your nervous system feel.
You don’t need to write a novel or follow a strict routine.
Just a few minutes a day can help you:
- Notice patterns between your emotions and symptoms
- Release built-up tension
- Feel more in control of your body and your health
Journaling is more than just writing things down.
It’s a simple, proven way to support your nervous system—and your gut—at the same time.
How to Start Journaling for Gut Relief
You don’t need a plan. You don’t even need more than five minutes.
Write about what’s on your mind.
Write down how your body feels.
Write what you wish someone else could hear.
You can track your meals, moods, or physical sensations. You can write about a future version of yourself you’re working toward. Or you can simply dump your stress onto the page so it doesn’t live in your body.
Over time, this small daily practice helps calm your nervous system—so your gut can finally take a breath, too.
Try This
Next time your stomach feels tight, puffy, or bloated—and you’re not sure why—pause for a moment and check in.
Instead of reaching for a food fix, try writing it out.
- Open your journal or notes app
- Set a timer for 2–5 minutes
- Let your thoughts spill out—no pressure, no perfect grammar
- Notice how your body feels when you’re done
This small act tells your nervous system:
“We’re safe. You can let go now.”
Start With a Guided Prompt in the Your Daily App
If you’re not sure what to write, we’ve got you.
Inside the Your Daily app, our De-Stressing Library includes journal prompts based on how you’re feeling—like anxious, overwhelmed, stuck, or shut down.
They’re short, supportive, and designed to help your body release stress so your digestion can reset.
👉 Explore the journaling tools and get the prompts that help calm both your mind and your gut. Try them now →
SOURCES
Want to go deeper? Here are a few of the studies and expert articles we’re pulling from:
- Trauma Release & Emotional Health
→ Journaling helps reduce stress and improve immune response after emotional events.
American Psychological Association - IBS & Gut Health
→ Expressive writing can reduce symptoms and improve pain management in IBS patients.
PubMed Central (PMC) - Parasympathetic Activation
→ Journaling can calm the nervous system by stimulating the vagus nerve and improving heart rate variability.
Psychology Today - Everyday Wellness Benefits
→ Journaling is linked to better mental clarity, emotional resilience, and reduced physical symptoms of stress.
Northwell Health – The Well
